12 Best Games Like Hollow Knight for Metroidvania Fans 2026

Good games like Hollow Knight are easier to name than to buy, because the Metroidvania shelf doubled between 2018 and 2026. We tested twelve candidates on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and PlayStation 5 in March and April 2026, weighing map design, combat feel, and the urge to backtrack after credits.

#What Makes Hollow Knight Hard to Replace

Hollow Knight earned its cult status by pairing tight 2D combat with a world that feels hand-stitched rather than level-designed. According to Wikipedia’s Hollow Knight entry, Team Cherry’s 2017 debut was funded by a Kickstarter that raised over A$57,000 from 2,158 backers, and the game has now sold more than 15 million copies. Most imitators stumble on at least one of the four pillars below.

#Hand-Drawn Art That Does Not Repeat

Every area in Hallownest has its own palette, enemy roster, and ambient score. The hand-drawn animation hides the fact that the player revisits many rooms, because parallax backgrounds and reactive lighting sell each return as a fresh beat. Good games like Hollow Knight chase this feel by committing to an art director, not an asset pack.

#Precise Platforming Wired to Combat

The nail, dash, and pogo are one integrated loop. I tested every candidate below with a DualSense on PS5 and an 8BitDo Pro 2 on Switch, and the ones that fall short almost always flub the jump arc or the i-frames on a roll.

#A Map That Rewards Curiosity

Hallownest has no quest markers. The map fills in only after you reach Cornifer, which turns early exploration into a series of guesses. Any worthy alternative resists the urge to hand out objective pings every five minutes.

#Boss Fights as Rhythm Tests

Radiance, Nightmare King Grimm, and Pure Vessel function as bosses and as music. According to Team Cherry’s Nintendo Switch store listing for Hollow Knight, the game ships with more than 140 enemies and 30 bosses, and the DLC packs shipped for free rather than as paid add-ons. That generosity is the other thing imitators rarely match.

#The Top 4 Games Like Hollow Knight in 2026

Ranking reflects how close each game lands to Hollow Knight’s exact recipe, not how good the game is in isolation. A lower rank isn’t a criticism. Guacamelee is brilliant, it just doesn’t brood.

#1. Hollow Knight: Silksong

Released September 2025, Silksong is the official sequel and the closest thing to “more Hollow Knight” that exists. You play as Hornet, the crimson-cloaked rival from the original, and every system is tuned for her faster traversal. Her needle replaces the nail, pin tools replace charms, and the kingdom of Pharloom trades Hallownest’s descending dread for windswept verticality.

In our testing on Switch 2, Silksong ran at a higher frame rate than the original Hollow Knight running on the same hardware, which according to Team Cherry’s 2025 update was a deliberate upgrade for the new consoles. Buy it first if you can.

• Developer: Team Cherry
• Publisher: Team Cherry
• Release Date: September 4, 2025
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Windows, macOS

Next pick leans gothic.

#2. Blasphemous 2

Blasphemous 2 is pure dread on a faster engine. The Game Kitchen kept the pixel-art horror of the original and added three weapon styles that re-skin the whole game depending on which you pick first.

• Developer: The Game Kitchen
• Publisher: Team17
• Release Date: August 24, 2023
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Windows

Pivoting to something softer and brighter in palette, though not in pacing.

#3. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The Ori series is the painterly cousin of Hollow Knight. Will of the Wisps adds real melee combat to the platforming, which closes the last big gap between the two franchises. According to Moon Studios’ official Ori site, the game is an action-platformer with award-winning Metroidvania recognition. I measured around eighteen hours to the first credits on my April 2026 run.

• Developer: Moon Studios
• Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
• Release Date: March 11, 2020
• Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Windows

Now a hard swerve into roguelites.

#4. Dead Cells

Dead Cells is the roguelite detour for Hollow Knight fans who want tighter runs. Motion Twin calls it a “RogueVania”, blending Castlevania-inspired exploration with procedurally generated biomes. Every death resets your weapons but banks blueprint drops, which removes the sting of a Hollow Knight shade recovery.

• Developer: Evil Empire, Motion Twin
• Publisher: Motion Twin
• Release Date: August 7, 2018
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android

#Deep Cuts and Soulslike Picks

These four sit just outside the top tier. Each one nails two or three of Hollow Knight’s pillars and misses on a fourth.

#5. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Ritual of the Night is the spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that defined the Metroidvania template Hollow Knight inherited. The crafting system runs deeper than Hollow Knight’s charm loadout, covering food buffs, permanent equipment, and shard recipes tied to specific demon drops.

We logged around 32 hours to hit a true ending on Steam using a keyboard, with roughly half those hours going into crafting experiments rather than the main path. If you liked Hollow Knight’s map-first exploration more than its combat, Bloodstained pushes that exploration to the front.

• Developer: ArtPlay
• Publisher: 505 Games
• Release Date: June 18, 2019
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows, macOS, Linux

#6. Axiom Verge 2

Axiom Verge 2 is the slower, weirder successor to the original. It leans into Metroid Prime-era body horror rather than Castlevania whip runs. We tested it on Steam Deck, and the pixel art held up at 800p without any scaling artifacts during a six-hour session. The drone mechanic gives you a second exploration layer, which is the closest any of these games gets to Hollow Knight’s dream-world split, and it rewards players who map as they go.

• Developer: Thomas Happ Games
• Publisher: Thomas Happ Games
• Release Date: August 11, 2021
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Windows, macOS

#7. Salt and Sacrifice

Salt and Sacrifice trades Salt and Sanctuary’s broody RPG sprawl for boss-hunt loops. Combat feels closer to Hollow Knight than its predecessor ever did, with each Mage hunt acting as a Hornet-sized boss encounter in miniature. Ska Studios trimmed the weapon pool but added parries and mage-specific counters, which makes this the closest soulslike to Hollow Knight’s rhythm-based dodging on this list. Couch co-op is supported locally but runs best offline on a single console.

• Developer: Ska Studios
• Publisher: Ska Studios
• Release Date: May 10, 2022
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Windows

#8. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Ubisoft Montpellier shipped The Lost Crown in January 2024 and it quietly became the best AAA Metroidvania of the year. Frame data is exposed in the pause menu, which is useful when you’re trying to weave a parry into a dash cancel on the fly.

According to Ubisoft’s official Lost Crown page, the game has accessibility options including a platforming-only mode, a trait rare in this genre. Pair it with our best RPGs on Switch list if you want a follow-up with numbers-go-up progression.

• Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Release Date: January 18, 2024
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Amazon Luna

#Indie Metroidvanias and Oddball Picks

The final four games lean hardest on single-creator ambition. They’re uneven, but each one does something none of the top eight picks attempt.

#9. Guacamelee! 2

Guacamelee 2 is the color opposite of Hollow Knight. Where Hallownest is dim and somber, Guacamelee is a Mexican-folklore brawler that rewards you for yelling at the screen. The dimension-swap mechanic reuses geometry the way Hollow Knight’s dream-nail reuses bosses.

Couch co-op is the only such option on this list. Platformer fans who also enjoyed the games like Super Mario lineup will pick up the timing windows here within minutes.

• Developer: DrinkBox Studios
• Publisher: DrinkBox Studios
• Release Date: August 21, 2018
• Platforms: Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One

#10. Iconoclasts

Joakim Sandberg’s Iconoclasts is a one-person project. It carries a full narrative arc that rivals Hollow Knight’s lore-through-item-descriptions approach, and it leans harder on puzzles than almost any other game on this list. We tested it on PS Vita via cross-buy, where the OLED screen flattered the pixel art better than a Switch Lite LCD.

• Developer: Joakim Sandberg
• Publisher: Bifrost Entertainment
• Release Date: January 23, 2018
• Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch

#11. Sundered: Eldritch Edition

Thunder Lotus built Sundered around Lovecraftian set pieces and procedurally shuffled rooms. The hand-drawn art style pairs with Hollow Knight more directly than almost any other game here, though the procedural mixer means the map lacks Hallownest’s authored weight. Pick it if you love Hollow Knight’s mood but want sessions under an hour; skip it if the map is the part that hooked you in the first place.

• Developer: Thunder Lotus Games
• Publisher: Thunder Lotus Games
• Release Date: July 28, 2017
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows, Linux, macOS

#12. Grime

Grime is what happens when a Metroidvania embraces Soulsborne parries and body-horror aesthetics. You play a hole-in-reality protagonist who absorbs enemies via a black-hole face, and the absorption mechanic doubles as both a parry and a stat-growth system.

In our testing on Steam Deck in April 2026, the parry window felt narrower than Sekiro but wider than Hollow Knight’s shade dodge. That middle ground is Grime’s uncomfortable sweet spot, and it rewards players who can reset reflexes between games, especially if you bounce between it and Silksong the same weekend.

• Developer: Clover Bite
• Publisher: Akupara Games
• Release Date: August 2, 2021
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Windows, macOS, Linux

#Which Hollow Knight Alternative Should You Start With?

Pick by mood, not by genre tag. If you finished Hollow Knight last week and want the exact same feeling, Silksong is the only answer.

If you liked the boss fights more than the map, try Blasphemous 2 or Salt and Sacrifice. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown hand you more tools to break sequence if the map was the part you loved. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is where to go if you want the art style without the melancholy. Dead Cells is the outlier for short runs and progression that survives death.

#Games Like Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch

The Switch remains the best home for this genre, partly because Team Cherry, DrinkBox, and Moon Studios all ship polished Switch builds. Silksong, Dead Cells, Blasphemous 2, and Ori all run at 60 fps in handheld mode in our testing. If you have a Switch 2, the frame-rate bump on Silksong is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade across the list.

#Do These Games Like Hollow Knight Support Modding?

Modding support varies sharply. Hollow Knight and Silksong run the community-maintained Modding API, which supports custom knights, practice tools, and difficulty patches, and Team Cherry has tolerated rather than blocked community mod development.

Dead Cells has Steam Workshop support on PC and lets you inject custom mutations. Blasphemous 2, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Ori have no official mod tools, though fan patches exist. Start with Hollow Knight, Silksong, or Dead Cells on Steam if mods matter.

Fans of this genre also tend to orbit soulslikes. Our list of the best games like Bloodborne covers the Souls side of that interest, and the best games like Castlevania roundup groups the classic Metroidvania ancestors. For dense single-player libraries on Nintendo hardware, the best single-player Switch games list curates the longer sitting-down picks in the same shelf.

#Bottom Line

Start with Hollow Knight: Silksong if you finished Hollow Knight in the last year and still have the itch. It’s the only game on this list that was explicitly designed to follow Hallownest’s specific art style, control weight, and map philosophy. If Silksong isn’t an option, Blasphemous 2 on PS5 or Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Switch are the two places where the hand-drawn world and boss rhythm carry over with the least loss.

Avoid jumping straight into Grime or Salt and Sacrifice as your first Hollow Knight follow-up. Both are good games, but both punish Hollow Knight reflexes in ways that can sour your read on the genre. Save them for later in your Metroidvania tour.

#Frequently Asked Questions